Chapter 137
***
The basic treatment for pneumothorax is to insert a chest tube and let it heal naturally.
If a hole opens in the lung, air leaks out.
So, to keep air from pressing on the heart and lungs and killing the patient, a tube is inserted into the chest and the air is drawn out through it.
However, the chest tube here does not directly treat the lung.
It only buys time until the lung heals naturally.
That is why there is a next step if the hole still won't close even with a chest tube.
Pleurodesis.
Because air keeps leaking from the lung, a drug is introduced into the pleural cavity to make the lung surface and the inside of the chest wall stick together.
And that drug was none other than the patient's own blood.
“From here on, I'm going to use Student Carl's blood to seal the hole in his lung. Branton, watch carefully.”
First, I used fluoroscopy magic to locate the hole in the left lung.
I inserted a chest tube into that side of his chest and drew out the air pooled in his chest.
Next, I drew about 200 ml of blood from Carl's forearm.
Then I immediately let that blood flow through the chest tube inserted into Carl's chest.
“Student Carl. Take the position I'm telling you to.”
I had him change positions this way and that.
The point was to let the blood spread evenly over the surface of the lung and the inside of the chest wall within the pleural cavity.
With that, the autologous blood pleurodesis was complete.
See? Easy.
Finally, if Branton casts Heal to reduce the air leak, the urgent treatment is done.
“This technique is called autologous blood pleurodesis. Do you understand the principle?”
“Since there was a hole in the lung, you sealed the lung hole with the patient's own blood.”
“That's right.”
Blood clots.
Using that principle, you seal the hole in the lung with blood like a Band-Aid.
There is no need to worry about allergies or rejection.
Because it's the patient's own blood.
“The most important thing is these positions. The blood has to spread evenly through the lung.”
After making Carl move around like that for a few minutes,
perhaps because the blood had successfully filled the hole in his lung, Carl's expression grew much more relaxed.
“Can you breathe okay now, Student Carl?”
“Thank you, Saint. I can breathe fine.”
Carl breathed carefully.
As his chest rose and fell, I listened with a stethoscope.
It seemed the hole had been sealed successfully.
But there was still one measure left to prevent recurrence.
“What? That's not the end?”
“Autologous blood pleurodesis was only an auxiliary measure to reduce divine power consumption. The technique that prevents recurrence is another one.”
Pleurodesis broadly comes in two forms.
One is autologous blood pleurodesis.
As we just did, it is a procedure that uses blood to seal a lung hole that won't close easily.
And the other is chemical pleurodesis.
“We're going to use talc.”
While Branton and Carl looked puzzled, I took out the talc powder.
I mixed the powder with saline to make a suspension, then injected it through the chest tube just as I had done with the blood a moment ago.
Then I gave Branton instructions.
“For the next few hours, Student Carl will complain of pain and fever. When that happens, just cast Refresh instead of Heal.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Because that's proof the medicine we just used is working properly.”
The principle of chemical pleurodesis is similar to Albothyl.
Since holes keep opening in the lung, you cauterize the area and make it stick to the chest wall.
That way, the hole won't open as easily.
As you can imagine from the principle, it hurts as horribly as Albothyl.
Branton kept marveling as he took notes on the pleurodesis.
After finishing his notes, he asked me one last question.
“Saint, how did you find out that talc could be used in the lung?”
“I learned it while operating on dwarves.”
I immediately gave the excuse I had prepared.
I couldn't exactly say I had known it from my previous life, so I pulled out an excuse suited to this other world.
“Dwarf patients often have especially thick chest walls. Some of them had pneumothorax, and while treating such a patient, I discovered that the chest wall had stuck together.”
When you operate on dwarves, you often find lungs that have fibrosed or stuck to the chest wall.
It was because, true to their race's love of mines and minerals, they often inhaled talc.
“I got the idea from that.”
“My goodness. I have many dwarf patients myself, and I'm ashamed I never noticed it until now.”
“Don't worry. I trust Branton will someday make discoveries that surpass even me.”
In fact, I'm hoping he does.
If a healer like Branton surpassed me someday, then from that point on I could just step away from that area.
Besides, after Charlotte raised Yulian's fame, I learned something else: fame is best auto-farmed.
That was true for Eri, for Aila, and for this healing center as well.
Cultivating them was also part of that auto-farming.
When, far in the future, I'd exhausted all my twenty-first-century knowledge and run dry,
if I wanted to just stand there with my arms folded and still be called a genius, I needed to build things up like this from now on.
It was a sort of misunderstanding-novel retirement plan.
— “Ah, there's no way the Saint didn't know that, right? Of course he was just giving his disciples a chance.”
Basically, that's my life plan.
For the record, I learned this life plan by watching my master, the Great Sage.
Master also made the magical system, then left the work to his disciples and spent his days doing only what he wanted. And whatever he did, everyone still applauded him.
I couldn't help but envy that kind of life.
They say once you're famous, people will applaud even if you crap yourself; turns out that saying isn't for nothing.
That's what a misunderstanding-novel protagonist's life is, if not anything else.
Anyway.
“Do you have another question?”
“I do have a question.”
Since I was passing on knowledge to Branton for my misunderstanding-novel retirement plan, it was Carl, not Branton, who asked.
“This is the first time Student Carl has asked a question.”
From the time we first met at the dining table, Carl had never asked a question.
Even when I taught black magic as Yulian, it was the same.
I knew Carl wasn't very close to studying, so I had never been disappointed by it.
Today, though, Carl had asked a question for the first time.
It took me a little time to accept that Carl had asked one.
Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
“You? Asking a question?”
Bear Student Dorian also looked at Carl as if he had seen something strange.
Carl shot back irritably.
“Why, can't I ask questions?”
“I'm just worried you'll waste the Saint's time with a pointless question.”
Carl answered by raising his middle finger, then met the eyes behind my crow mask.
And then he said,
“About the technique that fixed my lungs like this, does Lady Erika know it too?”
“If you mean autologous blood pleurodesis, Erika already knows it well.”
“That's right.”
Erika's innate magic is blood.
She'd long since been using applications like sealing wounds with her own blood.
Carl nodded as if the explanation made sense.
“No wonder. The last time she fought a black mage, her blood stopped abnormally quickly.”
“Erika?”
“Erika fights black mages?”
Carl answered, as if surprised I didn't know.
“Didn't you know? Lady Erika goes around hunting the black mages hiding in the academy territory after class, doesn't she? That's why she gets extra points and ranks so high among her classmates.”
In the past, the academy sealed off its grounds so the black mages couldn't get out.
And they put bounties on the black mages and declared that students who captured them would receive extra credit.
According to Carl, Erika was at the very forefront of it.
“I tried to fight black mages like Lady Erika and earn some points, but with my skill, it was hopeless.”
Carl laughed at himself.
Beside him, Dorian also shook his head in disgust.
“I've encountered black mages with Carl before, and the two of us could barely hold out. If the professor on patrol hadn't happened to save us then... whew.”
“What on earth is the academy doing?”
“The student council did complain, but the reply they got was that the professors were always watching, at least enough to keep them from dying, so they should feel free to fight the black mages to their heart's content.”
After hearing that, I couldn't help but cringe as well.
Just how obsessed with growth are they, that they're thinking of using even black mages as teaching material?
What's more, it was a project being pushed by the military, so it was a little different from the kidnapping incident during the upper-school case.
“Since the Saint is in the healing center anyway, the military seems eager to make use of that as well.”
Or maybe they simply trust me that much.
“Understood. I'll have to talk with Erika later.”
I wonder what she's been getting up to without my knowledge.
I let out a bitter smile and nodded.
***
At that time.
In a private room, Erika was chatting with someone while munching on apple slices Freya had peeled.
“I heard from Freya, Senior Jenny. You use Old Testament-style divine magic, right?”
Jenny Lailik.
Erika said to the second-year healing department student who had come to visit.
Jenny looked down at Eri on the bed in disbelief.
“I never said that.”
As she had in the recovery room, Jenny took a holy emblem out from inside her clothes.
But Erika's reaction didn't change.
“Well, maybe Aila would fall for it, but Freya won't be fooled by a lie like that. She studied law, after all. You can't try to trick her with lies.”
Freya, who had been listening quietly from the corner, nodded.
At the boldness of the two juniors, Jenny let out a dry laugh.
“I didn't expect that, after asking a junior I've never even met to come visit, you'd bring up something like this.”
“Are you planning to keep pretending?”
“No.”
Jenny shook her head.
“That's right. I can use Old Testament-style divine magic. So why did you call for me?”
“Because I'm putting together a hero party right now?”
Erika said, swallowing the apple whole.
“Our party needs a priest who can use Old Testament-style divine magic.”
“Do you know the difference, junior?”
“I studied it, so I do.”
New Testament-style divine magic is specialized for healing.
That is what most divine magic refers to.
By contrast, Old Testament-style divine magic is specialized in divine miracles.
Those divine miracles also include divine magic used in combat.
“Holy knights mostly use Old Testament-style divine magic, don't they? And there seems to be someone similar among the Saint's escorts, too.”
At Eri's words, Jenny's shoulders twitched.
She was worried Erika might notice the connection between herself and Gregor, the Saint's escort knight.
However, whether fortunately or because she simply wasn't interested, Erika only showed interest in Jenny.
“Ordinary healing priests are too frail to take into a hero party.”
“So you want to take me?”
“Yes.”
To Erika, Jenny was exactly the perfect talent she was looking for.
Not only could she support combat with Old Testament-style divine magic, she could also heal with New Testament-style magic if necessary.
Having learned from Yulian that talent should be recruited when it's at its lowest point,
Erika was actively putting that to use in her hero party.
“It doesn't seem like a bad offer to you either, Senior.”
“No. It's a bad offer.”
Jenny's response was firm.
“That's why I kept it secret that I learned the Old Testament style. I figured I'd start hearing things like 'become a holy knight' or 'join a hero party.'”
“Isn't that a good thing?”
“It's dangerous. And I don't really like hurting people.”
Jenny thought of her older brother.
A pitiful holy knight who had a kind heart, but was ostracized among the inquisitors because of that kindness.
Her older brother, who wore the ill-fitting shell of 'this one' and forced himself to look confident.
After that incident, Jenny acquired a cynical view of the world.
Although her brother had been saved through the Saint, and although Jenny herself had changed her view on luck somewhat through Yulian,
her thoughts on holy knights and heroes still hadn't changed.
“I don't want to be tied to such a dangerous group. What I want is a peaceful life.”
Jenny waved her hand in disgust.
“Like other healers, I just want to safely stay in the rear and heal.”
That was when it happened.
Erika held out a gold coin toward Jenny.
It was a negotiation technique she'd learned from Shun Isa.
If the other side refuses, first hold out a gold coin.
Then you can hear their true feelings.
“Senior. One gold coin a week.”
“......”
“If that's not enough, let's make it two.”
Jenny silently looked at the gold coin, then held up three fingers and said,
“Come to think of it, I've needed emergency funds lately. Three gold coins and I'll think about it.”
“Do you need that much? You write novels, Senior. And your spending is that high?”
“My roommate took my bankbook from me. So I need emergency funds.”
“All right. Then how about three gold coins a week?”
“Deal.”
Jenny held out her hand, and Erika clasped it, marveling that Shun Isa's teachings were right once again today.